Schizophrenia Symptoms

Schizophrenia is a mental disease that people often get confused with multiple personality disorder. Both diseases are cantered in the brain and one of the reasons the two get confused is because for years scientists said that multiple personality disorder was a form of schizophrenia. Now, of course, scientists know that the diseases are actually very different. Schizophrenia symptoms might be similar to the symptoms of multiple personality disorder but they have some fundamental differences too.

People with multiple personality disorders have a variety of personalities that each has their own individual identity that live inside a single body. People with schizophrenia, however, do not usually know that they have the disease. In the case of schizophrenia, it is the other people in the schizophrenic's life that notice something is going on and encourage the person to get help. Unfortunately because the schizophrenia symptoms are shared by so many other mental disorders and because they are so varied, diagnosing schizophrenia is very hard to diagnose. In fact, it is often misdiagnosed as other mental disorders.

The most important of all of the schizophrenia symptoms is that the cognitive function of a person's brain gets severely interrupted and they have problems with their emotions. Schizophrenics usually have trouble with their speech and sometimes mix up their words and sentences. They might try to talk about several topics of conversation at once without joining their thoughts together in any sort of coherent way. Schizophrenics might also have problems with their sense of self. The disease causes the schizophrenic to stop realizing that their actions affect the people around them.

The major schizophrenia symptoms include hallucinations and delusions that are often referred to as "psychotic manifestations." These hallucinations (or psychotic manifestations) can manifest themselves in a number of ways. Often a schizophrenic will hear voices that have no physical origin. They might see people or items that are not actually there. Sometimes, in the case of paranoid schizophrenics, the patient will be convinced that people are after them or that somehow their thoughts are being broadcast to the people around them. Another of the major schizophrenia symptoms involves the patient attaching extreme significance to an otherwise ordinary event and then gets irritated when nobody else feels the same emotions.

Schizophrenia symptoms fall into two major categories: Positive and Negative. Positive schizophrenia symptoms are the more extreme of the two categories and happen with much more frequent regularity. Negative schizophrenia symptoms can be difficult to diagnose because they are also associated with other mental disorders. Negative symptoms are also not as recognizable as positive symptoms.

Even if a person is riddled with schizophrenia symptoms, diagnosing the disease properly can be a problematic process. Another problem is that the disease is often misdiagnosed and so treatment gets delayed. Schizophrenic symptoms can be problematic but it is important that the patient get treatment as soon as possible. The more quickly a person gets diagnosed, the more effectively they can treat their disea

Signs of Schizophrenia Tip #1

Schizophrenia is not the same thing as having multiple personality disorder. In multiple personality disorder a person has a number of independent identities that all share one host body. Typically one of the personalities is dominant and the others exist under the surface. With Schizophrenia, there could be independent personalities but the person suffering from the disease believes that these identities exist outside of him or herself.

Signs of Schizophrenia Tip #2

There are different types of schizophrenia. The most widely known is that of paranoid schizophrenia in which the schizophrenic believes that there are people who are out to "get" him (or her). Commonly the patient associates himself with an elite group and believes that it is his membership with that group that has made him a target of others.

Signs of Schizophrenia Tip #3

Schizophrenia is normally treated with anti-psychotic drugs. There are new drugs being developed all the time. Other treatments include Electro Convulsive Therapy in which the patient is driven to convulsions by receiving a series of shocks to the brain. This treatment is thought to fix the electrochemical balance of the brain.